Full-Time Student.. It’s a Mission Field.

On January 23, 2014 by Bethany

Kathryn is one of my best friends in the world. Serving with her for two summers now in Haiti, we’ve seen each-other at our best and worst (hello Nutella parties and emotional freak outs). Kathryn is super intelligent and a powerhouse of organization, efficiency and laugh-till-you-hurt humor. She possesses one of the most pure and beautiful souls I’ve ever seen. She is graduating from Georgia Tech this May and has graciously offered some advice with regard to our Missional Series.

Day to day she faces the struggles of being a full-time student and trying to find the mission field before her. Take a second today to read what she’s got to say.

Love you fran.

-Bethany

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Hi, my name is Kathryn and I’m your average 21-year-old girl. I’m a senior in college and I’m graduating in May with no real idea of what I want to do with my life. I’ve been fortunate enough to serve for two summers with some pretty amazing people from Praying Pelican Missions in Haiti, and I really love Jesus.

On a day-to-day basis I wear several different hats. I’m a student, a choir member, a resident assistant for freshman girls and a sorority sister just to name a few. Each one of these hats provides me with a different mission field.

In my classes, I often have opportunities to minister through my attitude towards my professor and classmates. It’s so easy to become pessimistic and critical when your grades aren’t going the way you want them to, and unfortunately that pessimism is the norm. By being positive and uplifting when talking to my classmates about the course material and our professor, they start to observe that there’s something different about me. Sometimes they ask, and when they do I love telling them about the God of the Universe who came to earth and showed me how to live.

I’m in choir at school and we often sing sacred music. Our director is really good about discussing the meaning behind the lyrics of every song we sing. When we’re singing sacred texts, he always looks to me and other believers to look up the scripture that correlates with they lyrics.

I’m an employee for the department of housing at my university. I work with a diverse group of students and staff that come from all over the world. I love sitting and listening to their stories about their home countries. I am able to ask them about their faith directly and share my own with them. The message of Christ does the work for me, as His selfless act of coming to earth is so different from their gods. I am able to collaborate with them and plan programs for our residents that expose them to beliefs all around the world and this opens doors for me to share the gospel.

Lastly, I’m a member of a small Christian sorority on my campus. We spend time in the word together and we serve our community together. We build one another up so that we can pour into others. Each time I talk with my sisters about Christ I learn something new and I’m challenged in my own beliefs. This community has encouraged me to discover why I believe what I do. This Christ-filled community has been such a beautiful depiction of the church in my life.

All of this is not to say that I do a perfect job of living my life as Christ did. I fail. Sometimes I’m the most pessimistic person in the classroom. Sometimes I don’t really care where the lyrics are found in scripture. Often I chicken out and don’t share the gospel with my co-workers or residents. But in those moments, the grace of Christ is more apparent than ever. He loves me regardless of my innumerable failures, and encourages me to do better next time.

The bottom line is, each of us has the opportunity to be a missionary every time we encounter another person, whether stranger or friend. You can do this by explicitly sharing the gospel or just simply living as Christ did.

When we live the life that Christ lived, people notice that our way of life is set apart from the world.

So if you missed the opportunity yesterday, try to take advantage of it today.

“We, who have accepted Jesus as Lord, are all missionaries! Each of us may not be living abroad or leading mission trips as a career, but the truth is, everyone can be a missionary. This blog series will span across multiple blogs from our PPM Mission Coordinators and Advocates and will serve to showcase people who are living daily with a missional mindset. We will be giving a voice to a barista, who shares the love of Christ through espresso shots each morning. We will be the platform for a tired mom next door to share how she impacts her child’s friends when they come over for a sleepover. We will be the helping hand to a Pastor who wants to encourage his congregation to get involved. The school teacher who invests in his students and wants to see them succeed and know Christ. The janitor who humbly and lovingly listens to his co-workers as they vent and confess their sins to him. We pray these stories will encourage and challenge us all to live our lives as missionaries everyday, in our own unique mission fields!”